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¡°Come, Dance with Us¡± -interview with Robert Nederlander, Sr. and Robert Nederlander, Jr, the Most Successful Theatre Leader in Broadway |
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| Source: Sanlian Life Weekly 2007-4-9 |
¡°Come, dance with us¡±
-interview with Robert Nederlander, Sr. and Robert Nederlander, Jr, the most successful theatre leader in Broadway
¡°We invite every Chinese to come and dance with us¡±, said excitingly Robert Nederlander, Jr, President of Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment (NWE). ¡°Come and dance with us¡± is an actor¡¯s line in 42nd Street, a classical musical of Broadway. Nederlander family is the most powerful theatre operator in Broadway. ¡°Everyday, there are numberless producers waiting to see Robert Nederlander, Sr. (Robert Nederlander, Jr¡¯s father, leader of Nederlander family). But he only gives everybody 2 minutes.¡± This is the impression of Wang Luoyong, a famous opera actor who performed in Broadway for many years, to the family.
Reporter: Ma Rongrong
On March 21, a joint-venture theatre network called ¡°Broadway China Network¡± was formally established, which will be operated by the Nederlander New Century jointly managed by Madame Chen Jixin, Chair of Beijing Oriental Broadway International Theatre Management Company which had been introduced Rockstone¡¯s concert in china and Robert Nederlander, Jr. This is the first professional theatre network in Chinese cultural field. The establishment of this company symbolized that Broadway formally marched into Chinese musical market after many years¡¯ trial.
¡°In the near future, Chinese audience may see original American Broadway musicals at their door way¡±, explained by Wang Luoyong on the impact of the network on Chinese musicals. At present, the Nederlander New Century have sighed agreements with over 20 theatres nationwide. According to the agreements, the corporation will put on a series of Broadway musicals in cooperative theatres; invest in theatres in the network to update their facilities, help theatre managers achieve greater professional development, provide them professional experiences on theatre operations, long-term financial planning and information management. Finally, the company will formulate creative new-type marketing strategy and audience service plan with theatre managers to present excellent plays from the U.S. and other countries to Chinese audiences.
The first plan of ¡°Broadway China Network¡± is to arrange the tour of 42nd Street, a Tony Award-winning musical in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Ningbo, Changsha, etc. In addition, Broadway China Network has its own ticketing system-Ticketmaster, through which Nederlander New Century may try to fix the price at 30 to 40 US dollars (about RMB 220-300). This would impose an huge impact to Chinese theatres which usually set their price at RMB 800, even 1,000.
Chen Jixin said, ¡°The secret of Broadway musical to achieve commercial success is to input once for all and output repeatedly. But the genuine significance of Broadway China Network to theatre management in China is how we can perform so many times and still guarantee stable number of loyal audiences and steady amount box office.¡±
Sanlian Life Week: You have visited China twice. What impressed you during these two visits?
Robert Nederlander, Sr.: Around 1975, I was invited to visit Washington as a Board director of the University of Michigan. I saw some Chinese officials there and was invited by them to visit China. I stayed there for 3 and half a week. It¡¯s quite a long visit at that time. In 1994, the former U.S. ambassador and I come to China again. I found that great changes had been taken place in China in the past 20 years. Both of the architecture and social environment were different. When I first visited China, there was no such concept of show market in China. But now, rapid urban expansion and economic development attracted me to stay here to do some thing. My son also stayed in China longer and longer.
Sanlian Life Week: It is said that Madame Chen Jixin had been waited 3 years just to meet you. Since then, that is, since about 2001, you began to investigate Chinese market. What information does that investigation bring to you?
Robert Nederlander, Jr: Three years. My family had been waiting for Madame Chen for 30 years. In 2001, my friend introduced to me the development situations of entertainment market in China, and the performance of Madame Chen achieved in Chinese performing market. After then, I started my investigation to Chinese market. In three years¡¯ time, I visited many cities. Wherever I went, I found Chinese people had great enthusiasm to Broadway, which encouraged me a lot. I also visited many theatres in a lot of cities in China. They all had very good facilities. Sometimes, I even hope to bring American audiences to China to see plays. But these theatres are usually taken by government as an image project, and lack prediction and design to development in the late period. So an idea came into my mind: maybe we could cooperate with Chinese partners to develop this market, improve the box office, efficiency of theatres here. Meanwhile, I found great gap of cultural difference exist between Chinese and American market. As a result, we must set up a new management mode by combining the market characteristics here.
Sanlian Life Week: The Lion King created a record of performing 13 weeks in a row. How do you consider this success?
Robert Nederlander, Sr.: I heard that the seat capacity reached 99%. This indicates clearly that excellent works are welcomed in market. I believe that is a successful case of combining American experiences with local experiences. In the meanwhile, it shows the openness and potential of Chinese audiences to musical culture.
Sanlian Life Week: However, both Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, Qingdao are quite different cities. How can you solve the differences as well as those between the culture taste of Chinese audiences and orientation of Broadway musicals?
Robert Nederlander, Jr: A very important part of our work is to look for suitable local partners to push our projects and to evoke audiences¡¯ interests to Broadway musicals. This thinking and objective are key to our success. Furthermore, we realized that not all musicals would be equally welcomed in China. So the first step is to choose those classical musical with international influences. Indeed, the taste of Broadway is quite American. But Broadway is also deeply influenced by the world in its development, which is also another reason why it is so popular worldwide. Chinese audiences have very high cultural taste, and have a long tradition of appreciating plays. So I think Broadway would become popular in China as well. We will do a lot of job to help Chinese audiences to understand our culture and traditions, and will produce some new musicals on Chinese topics specially tailored to Chinese audiences¡¯ taste.
Sanlian Life Week: The ownership of many theatres in China belongs to local government. How can you solve the difference between the regional management of Chinese theatres and the chain management required by the network?
Robert Nederlander, Jr: In my opinion, they are quite different. So we will make great efforts to negotiate with our partners to decrease management cost and increase profit. We are private enterprise. So profit is extremely important to us. This is the prime experience of Broadway. Since there are different competent authorities, we have to sign different agreements with different theatres. In the U.S., we meet the same situation because the theatres in America are owned by different people. When discussing with theatres, the government resources and cultural background of Madame Chen Jixin played an important role. Many decisions are made by us jointly.
Sanlian Life Week: What role does theatre network plays in the success of Broadway musicals?
Robert Nederlander, Jr: My family accumulated many management experiences in the past 100 years. In terms of ticket price, our pricing is not high comparing the proportion it attributes to American people¡¯s revenue, because Broadway musicals normally would perform for many times. In the U.S, ordinary audience can buy a ticket of good seats just for 40 U.S dollars. If they come to the TKTS in Times Square to buy the remaining ticket, the price will be even cheaper. According to the statistics in 1997, from it debut in October 1982 to June 2000, altogether 7,397 performances of Cat were shown, and a total box office of 380 million U.S. dollars was achieved.
Sanlian Life Week: In 2001, due to the influences of 911 Incident, the box office of Broadway dropped by 80% within several months. What¡¯s the situation now?
Robert Nederlander, Sr.: Today¡¯s Broadway is better than any period. Many visitors did not stop loving New York just because of 911. Government also gives strong support to Broadway. We continue to show excellent musicals, and people hope to lead a normal life. After 911, the box office of Broadway dropped dramatically. But New York government backed up timely, including inviting Broadway to perform in hotels, offer us many preferential policies. As a result, Broadway¡¯s box office is even better now.
Sanlian Life Week: During these years, not only Nederlander, but many top-notch musical corporations, including those from England, come to China. In May 2006, Broadway Asia Entertainment was established in Shenzhen, which alleged that it would invest a large amount of money in Shenzhen in the past 3 years, and put on 12 musicals in Chinese and English in more than 20 major cities. But Nederlander is the first one which could establish interactive theatres by means of cooperating with Chinese corporations. Why do you think Nederlander can be the first one?
Robert Nederlander, Jr: I don¡¯t take Disney, Broadway Asia Entertainment, and Mackintosh as our competitors. They are partners working with us. They produced excellent musicals and put on in our theatres. In China, we are still working with them and bring excellent musicals into China. Our businesses cover a great variety fields. But the most important aspect is theatre management. We will develop audiences and choose a musical most suitable to a market and a market most suitable to put on a musical, and provide audiences many choices.
Sanlian Life Week: Just like you are store boss and others are supplier?
Robert Nederlander, Jr: Very interesting comparison.
Sanlian Life Week: But to China, musical is still a niche market.
Robert Nederlander, Jr: This needs time. We have reached consensus with investment partners and have make preparations for no profits in three years¡¯ time. |
On December 2004, 42nd Street was performed in Moscow |
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